A couple of weeks ago, a memorial Mass for Michael was held here in Birmingham at the Cathedral. The bishop presided and offered a very nice, even charming homily in which he first focused on the Scripture readings of the day, and then turned to Michael, whom he remembered, among other things, as one who continually encouraged him, among other things, to keep his preaching rooted in the Scriptures.

I blogged about that before, and once the archives have moved over here, I will guide you there, if you are interested.

As I sat there listening and attempting to join my weak, unenthusiastic voice to the others, a question came to me.

There is nothing I shall want.

Really? I thought. Do I really believe that right now?

I have written before and will write more at length in the near future about how Michael’s death has body-slammed me into confronting the nature and content of my faith, this faith about which I write and speak, which I have been paid to communicate off and on for a couple of decades now.

There are various dimensions to that challenge. The most obvious is that of mourning loss. Doss the reality of Michael’s physical absence overwhelm my faith in the Resurrection? Am I actually no better than the pagans in my response?

The other dimension is that of the sufficiency of God. As I have written before, in my prayer, which is centered on the prayer of the Church – the Liturgy of the Hours, the Mass, and then the rosary – I am forced to center my focus, not on my own loss, but on God’s glory, mercy and my hope and trust in him. This is no surprise, intellectually speaking. It was the whole point of an entire book that I wrote – The Words We Pray.

But now ideas, theories and intellectually-accepted notions confront cologne, clothes, shoes and Jacksonville Jaguar hats untouched now for almost five weeks. They confront absolute silence in a bedroom in the darkness of night, a silence undisturbed by breathing, shifting presence on the other side of the bed.

Amy Welborn

Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side.

Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes.

She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel.

Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.